Entrepreneur and CEO Brit Morin shares stories from the early days of her startup Selfmade, lessons on human-centered leadership, and ways women are uniquely suited to excel as entrepreneurs. Here are seven qualities she says are often under-valued but closely tied to entrepreneurial success.

IDEO’s Michelle Lee and Brendan Boyle share small ways you can experiment with bringing a playful mindset into your work and examples of using play to surface innovative approaches to serious challenges.

How do you decide which opportunities to pursue in your career—and what values can guide you along the way? Designer and author Donald Burlock, Jr. shares the creative frameworks that he turned to at each stage of his career, and how to use them in your own journey.

What does stress or anxiety feel like in your body? How about joy? Try these two warm ups to tune into the physical feeling of joy. They can help set the tone for a generative brainstorming session, a round of introductions, a project kickoff, and many other moments.

There’s good reason—and plenty of scientific evidence—to suggest we prioritize seeking moments of joy. Designer and author Ingrid Fetell Lee shares why joy is important during challenging times, how it improves our performance and capacity for creativity, universal elements that make up the aesthetics of joy, and how to overcome common barriers to joy.

In a business context, it’s just as important as in film or entertainment to think about the way you structure your story and select the right pieces of information for maximum impact. Ann Kim, Senior Portfolio Director at IDEO and instructor in our course Impactful Presentations, walks through the elements of a story, different story arcs, why and how to experiment with your story arcs, and shares examples from her work in the healthcare and entertainment worlds.

With every new year, we’re faced with excitement at the open slate ahead of us. If you’re thinking about the next steps in your career, we’ve collected some resources to help you achieve your goals—whether you’re trying to become a better leader, more creative thinker, or more compelling storyteller, we’re here to support you.

Rochael Adranly, IDEO partner and general counsel, has spent her career finding the balance between the rules-based world of law and the ambiguous, non-rules-based world of design. In this Creative Confidence Podcast episode, she shares how to bring out the natural creativity in others and encourage colleagues to be your partners in innovation—instead of your roadblocks.

In this episode of our Creative Confidence Series, Chris Flink, executive director of the Exploratorium, former IDEO partner, and a founding faculty member of Stanford University’s d.school talks to IDEO U Dean Suzanne Gibbs Howard about the evolution of the museum over 50 years, how they’ve expanded their reach globally, and how they cultivate creativity with their visitors, the broader community, and within their own organization.

At IDEO, we know that our greatest tool for innovation and problem solving is creativity. But from the time we’re children, we’re taught that creativity is only for some people, or that it’s something you lose as you grow older. It’s considered fanciful, rather than intrinsic to good design, and even business. To us, it’s the most important part of what we do, and helps us open our minds to discovering new solutions to tough problems.

In a special episode of our Creative Confidence Series podcast, IDEO U co-managing directors Suzanne Gibbs Howard and Coe Leta Stafford answered questions from our community of learners on how to overcome barriers to creativity at work with tactical examples, stories, and tips.

Even just five years ago, in many companies, only some people had permission to be creative. But that’s changing—quickly. Creativity isn’t only important in fields like design and advertising, but in law, finance, and even medicine. A reliance on multidisciplinary teams means that everyone is expected to dream up novel and game-changing ideas. And as more jobs become automated, creativity as a skill will be more important than ever. It’s the tool everyone can use to break patterns, generate new ideas, and make big leaps.